Man, where does the time go? It seems like just a few weeks ago, we were enjoying the annual Christmas on the River festival. Now, we come to find out that on Thursday at noon, the year will officially be half-over.

Twenty-six weeks, gone like that. Back when I was younger, the days seemed to drag by a lot slower. Somehow, between now and then, my perception of time changed. It kicked into some kind of gravitational fourth gear or something.

It’s like the difference between spending an hour listening to a teacher talk about the history of dirt and spending an hour playing backyard football. Which lasts longer? Yeah, you just think they’re the same.

It’s the difference between how long it takes to get through Christmas Eve and how long it takes to get through Christmas Day. It’s the difference between a week’s worth of work (or school) and a week on vacation.

All this means that Christmas really is just around the corner — for me, at least. For others, it may be — well, as slow as Christmas.

As we get older, our perspective on a lot of things changes. We wax nostalgic about things we used to despise, remember things differently from the way we see them now, even come to admire people we didn’t like long ago, forgetting why we disliked them in the first place. What seemed important years ago now seems trivial in retrospect.

Time is a funny thing. Like money (“Time is money,” right?), you can spend it and you can waste it. You can give some of yours to someone else or you can take your own. One thing’s for sure: If you sit still long enough, it will pass you by.

It is still July, right?